22 November 2015

Between the official arrival of El Niño in March and NOAA’s November update,
the scope of the long-awaited global phenomenon is becoming clear: the
2015 El Niño is already setting records and is on track to becoming the
strongest event ever recorded.The official classification will wait for
three months of data, but model estimates suggest the 2015 event will
grow even stronger and could top the high mark set by the 1997-98 event.

During
the week of November 8 through 14, El Niño set a new record high for
sea surface temperature in the central eastern Pacific, the most closely
tracked indicator for measuring the strength of El Niño/La Niña events.
At 5.4°F (3.0˚C),
the weekly anomaly was 7 percent higher than the 5.0°F (2.8˚C) anomaly
for the week prior, a reading that in turn had tied the high mark set by
the 1997 El Niño.

08 November 2015

Memo to media: If countries go no further than their current
global climate pledges, the earth will warm a total of 3.5°C by 2100.

A very misleading news release from the U.N. Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) — coupled with an opaque UNFCCC report on those
pledges, which are called intended nationally determined contributions
(INDCs) — has, understandably, left the global media thinking the
climate talks in Paris get us much closer to 2°C than they actually do.

The INDCs have the capability of
limiting the forecast temperature rise to around 2.7 degrees Celsius by
2100, by no means enough but a lot lower than the estimated four, five,
or more degrees of warming projected by many prior to the INDCs,” said
Ms. Figueres.